A Necessary Experiment?

Trinh Minh-Ha's Reassemblage (1983) is an experimental depiction of the Senegalese people, a thriving African community who are often improperly portrayed. The film sets out to dispel such previous portraitures through such unconventional techniques as jump cuts, stretches of silence and blank screens. These technical elements are often jarring and get in the way of getting the film's message across. The disconcerting nature of the filmmaking is particularly perplexing when hearing Minh-Ha's intentions (or lack thereof) in a dialogue with Constance Penley and Andrew Ross entitled When I Project It Is Silent.

In this dialogue, Minh-Ha states, "Any motive that I had before starting work on the film necessarily dissolved as I went along, so that creating consisted not so much in inventing something new as in rediscovering the links within and between images, sounds and words." From this statement, it seems that while Minh-Ha may have had an initial plan of attack, she abandoned any goal to create a coherent piece for the sake of getting a better understanding of what and why we capture certain subjects on film. As such, it is implied that the collection of footage for this piece was done without bounds, and consequently without order. Minh-Ha herself describes that the filmed subjects were "purposeless," that their filming was not "governed by a single rationale."

While my experience watching experimental films is limited, I feel comfortable saying that lack of structure in filming is not necessarily detrimental to experimental film, on the contrary I presume in some instances such filming has the potential to be conducive to challenging traditional film conventions. My problem in this particular case is that Minh-Ha tries to address a very specific issue (rectifying past ethnographic portrayals) from loosely related images. In essence, she creates a very definite story from haphazardly captured footage, resulting in a clumsy balance between story and discourse.

Minh-Ha makes it no secret that her intention was to "[unsettle] our habit of seeing through the documentary 'object-oriented' camera eye" to give an unfettered image of the Senegalese lifestyle. By choosing not to abide by the typical structure of documentary to achieve an authentic and organic representation, she seems to forget that so long as the subjective eye of the camera is recording, truth is being filtered. The filmmaker's presence is simply not natural to this people's environment. Thus it is natural to question whether Minh-Ha's straying from conventional story-telling is any more effective than documentary.

Two particular techniques Minh-Ha uses to "better" project her message come to mind. The first is the absence of sound and/or image - the stretches of silence and blankness mentioned above. When questioned about this particular technique, Minh-Ha suggests, "Silence is an important part of the work: it makes it breathe." Thus one can conclude that the ultimate goal of using this technique was to make the film as organic and alive as the people it depicts. While Minh-Ha confesses her awareness that silence can be "disquieting and disorienting" she maintains that this "breathing" also functions as an opportunity for the viewer to reflect on the previous image and narration to form his own conclusions. However, at times, Minh-Ha's unconventional and disjoint techniques prevent the viewer from obtaining a decent understanding of these people, thus it is implausible for her to expect viewers to make sense of her abstract narration and imagery to develop their own interpretation.

The viewer's experience was perfectly summed up when addressing another repeated convention of Reassemblage: close-ups on women's breasts. My own rationale of these shots was to suggest the fertility and health of these people. To me this made perfect sense when put in context with Minh-Ha's narration about the usual images of African women, with starvation apparent in their frail topless bodies. So I was surprised and curious to see the various interpretations around the room when this was brought up in class. One person suggested these close-ups were used to commodify/fetishize women, while someone else suggested the close-ups functioned to focus on a single woman rather than always looking at a number of women collectively. Furthermore separate suggestions were made that these shots function both to humanize and to dehumanize these women.

With the idea that this film was meant to correct the public perception of Senegalese people, I read the filmmaker's admission, "My approach is one which avoids any sureness of signification," and consequently had to question the credibility and persuasiveness of Reassemblage. When asking viewers to draw finite conclusions about their own potential misconceptions, I have to believe that a more resolute set of concrete assertions than Trinh Minh-Ha's abstract musing is necessary to change a viewer's mind.